Diary of Jong Ah Siug - excerpts

Excerpt of the diary.

Jong, Ah Siug, 1869. Diary.

Accession number: MS 12994

From the State Library of Victoria's Manuscript Collection.

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Translation

"That hatchet was my hatchet. It was an old blunt hatchet. I bought the hatchet about 5 months earlier. I bought it on the day in January 1867 when the Chinamen went away and sold it to me. That was the time I went to their tent and left, and went to Cochrane's township and Mr Sharp's shop. I bought it. That night when I smoked opium I took the hatchet and sharpened it a little.

That knife was my knife, an old knife with a shart point and a sharp edge which I had bought 3 years earlier. I went to Mount Misery in June 1864 and bought that knife to set up a store and butcher's shop. I went to Ballarat to buy stock. I found the money to buy from the store-master one 10 pound box of opium. Very dear. I and the master had an argument over the money. I did not buy the stock, or set up a store or butcher's shop. At Mount Misery I and my mate used that knife to cut bread. I went to live at Symott's diggings and then went to Anderson's Hill diggings. I used the knife sometimes to cut meat and too often to cut tin.

See the dam on the map; it is about a quarter mile from the Chinamen's tents. It is a quarter of a mile to the log over the river which was used as a bridge. The ground at the edge of the dam is where the 5 men from the tents came up and stabbed me with a knife. My route when I was going to Cochrane's came by the dam and I was hurt and fainted there. The stump by the dam is a dry stump about 3 or 4 perches from the dam. I threw a bag containing 10 ounces of gold on the ground near the stump."

This translation of Jong's writing was created by Ruth Moore & John Tully published in:

A Difficult Case by Ruth Moore & John Tully. Jim Crow Press, Daylesford, 2000